Ask HN: How do you feel about being downvoted? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you feel about being downvoted?

11 points0xbadcafebee15 comments

I get downvoted a lot (more lately for some reason). And I'm mostly fine with it. I have over 12,000 karma, so a few downvotes aren't going to impact the site functionality for me at all.

But I noticed today that getting downvoted when I don't know why I got downvoted actually makes me feel a mild form of panic. It's like my subsconsicous is perceiving some sort of unknown threat, and so I actually get anxiety.

If I didn't violate any HN guideline, I only have a couple conclusions for the downvote. One, somebody just dislikes what I said and wants to disagree via downvote. Two, somebody doesn't like me personally and wants to punish me. Three, they just don't think my comment was constructive. After that, I'm grasping at straws.

Does anyone else feel poorly when they get downvoted and they don't know why? Do you have any suggestions for how to deal with this?

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I’m relatively new, and I’m not sure how I feel about downvotes yet. I might prefer a system of upvotes-only, with the option to flag a post for review if it violates the forum rules. I like not yet having the option to downvote. With book reviews I tend to only leave a high mark for a book I am grateful for, or nothing for a book that didn’t resonate, for it might be helpful to someone else. Who am I to judge? Critical reviews carry more water as the readers know the reviewer more.

Since I don’t much know the value of HN points I don’t much care yet. I might be okay with hiding them altogether, except they are a useful indicator about an active discussion.

Better to just have a no-vote system like forums back in the day

Even upvote-only system can skew readers' bias through "ratio-ing"

I don't care. Downvote away. I care much more when someone explains to me that I'm wrong and why. I interpret a downvote as someone's own insecurity about their own opinions. I upvote well articulated comments, regardless of agreement.

For some reason, HN downvotes hurt my feelings more. I think it's because they're pretty neutral. With SO, you can downvote because it's not a useful solution or it's outdated or it doesn't work. With HN, people only downvote because they don't like what you said.

It works though. I've put more thought on whether my words hurt someone else's feelings enough for them to downvote me. I've cut back on the snark (which more often than not, is annoying rather than funny). It's a good feedback mechanism, but it feels a little strong because it's so rarely used.

And I think in some cases, there are things that need to be said and people who don't like hearing it. It makes me mindful that these are words that make people uncomfortable. Sometimes it means I'm on to something, but also that I should phrase it differently.

I feel the same way. I don't like unexplained downvotes. Most of the time I feel that it's a product of someone misinterpreting a statement. If they had left a reply, then it's possible we could see each other's points of view in a respectful manner. I guess it's just easier to downvote and more on though.

The only thing I think I feel differently about is that I dont feel panic. I feel crushed sometimes. I work a job where my opinion means nothing. My wife doesn't care for my opinions or even to discuss many topics. So if it's been a rough day at work or home, it kills me to see people just downvote without a conversation. I guess the important thing to remember is that none of our opinions really matter, just look at the state of political representation.

There are most certainly folks that come here with the sole intent to down vote what they find here. My suggestion is to keep that in mind.

And it doesn't feel like a leap to surmise that a small percent of users here may account for a large percent of downvotes here and anonymity probably encourages those who do that.

On the other hand, that anonymity also prevents retaliation wars which would probably get out of hand fast here otherwise.

One way to address that issue could be to limit the number of downvotes one gets to use here. For example you might be allotted 10 downvotes a month and that's all. My hunch is if that were implemented we see a huge drop in downvotes here. In my case I don't think I've hit that limit many times, if any.

Downvotes are more disturbing than upvotes are rewarding. I suppose this is related to the psychology of happiness, e.g. Gilbert’s “Stumbling on Happiness”?

It might be good to make a downvote = -.5 and an upvote = +1 to even out the effect?

Just a thought...

Downvotes could be -0 for all I know. It's disturbing because it grays out your comment.

I don't like that and I don't like it when I'm voted down, especially when, for example (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27304811), I can't understand why the down vote was set on this point. This arbitrariness leaves me with a strong negative feeling, which is then also transferred to other down votes, even if they were justified.

Maybe they downvoted your comment because they didn't like the blog you were linking to?

From a quick skim of it, it seems to be mostly just some guys random opinions, and I'm not finding what he has to say insightful or interesting. I didn't downvote your comment, but I imagine the person(s) who did probably have the same impression of that blog as I do.

Sometimes I deserve my downvotes and I'm okay with that. When I'm sure that I don't, it is either some political spat that is not worth thinking about because opinions differ, or it is just HN having idiots like any other online place. Accept that there are always people who will downvote and you can do nothing about them.

Don't dwell on it - if they wanted to tell you, they would have. Move on to the next activity.

On HN, only commenticide matters - then you need to pay attention :-)

It's my impression (cannot be proven) that when one of my comments irk people and is downvoted that people look at my other comments and gratuitously downvote them too.

I would think that would be an easy thing for HN's admins to detect. I hope they are doing so and cancel out any such downvotes.

I know this happens on other sites, but I've never experienced this on HN. One reason being that you can't downvote anything more than a day old.

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